The year that Twitter went to #Bonnaroo


Twitter made Time’s cover, but more telling for me is what is happening with Twitter and the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival here in Tennessee.

Knoxville News Sentinel online producer Lauren Spuhler (heading to cover her fifth Bonnaroo today) grabbed the user name @bonnaroo in March 2007. You can see her first Tweet below.

@bonnaroo's first tweet

She used it in 2007 and 2008, but by December is had but 487 followers. Just last week, we renamed it @bonnaroonews  so the official festival site could grab @bonnaroo. By then, it had over 7,800 followers. Today it’s pushing 8,000 (you can help by following @bonnaroonews).

And if you go to search.twitter.com, posts with the hashtag of #bonnaroo are being added at a rate of at least a couple a minute. It’s a fascinating stream of Tweets, sort of real time news coverage from hundreds of sources.

Tweets up are being planned and I’m sure finds will find each other using the service.

Just another sign Twitter has gone “mainstream.”

(We’ve also got complete Bonnaroo coverage at knoxville.com.)